Open Forum – Tuesday

23 April 2019

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Gezza

It’s not even really getting as much attention as the Christchurch mass murder on Al Jazeera tv. It’s item one, but the coverage is much shorter. They’re currently showing two videos of a car bomb found outside a church that went off during the attempt to defuse it. Not sure if it’s the only one. Last night they showed video from a different angle of one exploding somwhere with the presenter’s voiceover saying that the authorities had deliberatelly detonated it.

Corky

I suppose, to be fair, another bombing in Sri Lanka, even after the relative calm, is just par for the course. Whereas the NZ shootings were straight out of a parallel universe.
It just annoys me we seem to have a rating system on who gets what global sympathy and coverage.

Gezza

Well, probably so do ther countries too. Events in the West that don’t directly concern or affect themselves or their regions probably don’t feature that highly on, say, PRC or Saudi Arabian, or Indian or Pakistani tv. Indian tv news commentary channels are notoriously Fox-like, intensely parochial & nationalistic, & there hundreds of them.

Corky

Corky

I asked yesterday whether the Sri Lankan bombing was utu for Christchurch? One security expert said the Sri Lankan terrorist attack would have been months in the planning, so that means planning was well advanced before the Christchurch attacks.

That’s really unfortunate news for one Western country. It means utu has still to be served. My guess is terrorists will be wanting to coat tail on the back of the latest attack to magnify its effect.

duperez

Gezza

It’s hard to know without a lot of research I expect. Does an earthquake in Italy get as much attention in China or Pakistan as it does in Britain? There would be a lot of factors that affect the coverage. Including how big it is, how close it is. how many are killed, how much destructin it causes, how easy it is to get information and coverage, how much information is available from their governments, how much international expert help is offered, etc.

Cellphones & the internet are rapidly helping spread international coverage of natural catastrophes. But that can depend on how much control the authorities have on the internet.

I found it interesting that there is very little video footage of the 2004 Boxing Day earthquake & tsunami that killed 250, 000 people, but there is a ton of video on the internet of the 2011 Tohuku earthquake & especially the tsunami it generated.

lurcher1948

For you Corky,Leighton Smith a departed but still hanging around NZME ZB talkback rightwinger commenting on Jacinda Ardern, a view for Leighton,JACINDA is PM and you Leighton are an old nobody now with a podcast trying to earn money and reverence

lurcher1948

On a nearby rightwing blog a poster suffers the same fate as me, Say it as it is and the feral right get rid of you,THE TRUTH HURTS,as the losers lash out….BITTER LOSERS,
Psycho Milt
Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
I still don’t get how people get so worked up over a display of empathy to the Muslim community in New Zealand.
It’s no great mystery – they’re so worked up about it because they hate Muslims.
Thumb up 7 Thumb down 54 LOG IN TO REPLY REPORTAPRIL 23, 2019 7:23AM
THE RIGHT ARE SCARED AS THEIR TIMES PAST,and most rightwingers are islamphobes

Kimbo

It’s one of the mysteries that some of the right wing, of the conservative and/or religious variety anyway, are so anti-Muslim. After all, sharia prescribes many of the social, legal, cultural and educational values they often lament are being lost in the West.

harryk

Yesterday I searched the names in the April 11 intelligence report which warned of attacks. One took me to a 2006 media report of Jihadis who were fighting the Tamil LTTE as allies of the Sri Lankan Govt in Batticaloa. One of the men mentioned in the April 11 warning, Zahran, is pictured in the 2006 piece. IS has now distributed photos of three alleged suicide bombers including Zahran. Below I quote from the 2006 piece and once more link to it –

‘ “we know that certain wealthy persons (meaning non-state actors) are helping various religious groups in Sri Lanka to put up mosques. But this has nothing to do with the Government of Saudi Arabia.” The Police confirmed this further. “We have found that Muslim militants and their sect receive large donations of money from West Asian countries. They even give scholarships to Muslims to study religion in their countries,” I.G.W.R. Kandewatte, Assistant Superintendent of Police (Kattankudy) said. With the Tiger guerrillas militarily defeated, security authorities in the east now want the one time Home Guards and others who inherited their weapons to surrender them.’

The Jihadis were once allies of the Govt, both fighting the LTTE. Did any of them recieve Govt protection? How long did it continue? Could they have used official protection to conceal their subsequent activities? It’s very obvious the perps were well known to the Govt and security forces.

harryk

And – if I can identify one of the eventual suicide bombers and his photo, in just a few minutes of searching open source material online, then the failure of the Sri Lankan Govt isn’t just incompetence. These individuals have been well known to the security forces for many years. There is a missing factor.

Here’s a brief analysis of why this engages Aust and NZ national interest.

Sri Lanka was once within the orbit of the US alliance. Pressure from human rights groups and attempts to open a UN investigation into Govt abuses during the final battle with the Tamil Tigers, including pressure from the UK and Aust, led the Rajapaksa Govt to move closer to China and away from India. Result – the loss of Hambantota to China. China and India are now competing for influence in Sri Lanka and the US alliance, of which NZ is a part, supports India.

Senior elements of the former SL govt including a member of Rajapaksa’s family allegedly facilitated maritime people smuggling ventures to Aust and NZ in retaliation for supporting calls for a UN investigation. Post violence, the smugglers will once more be busy. Tamils who arrived on previous smuggling boats and have either been released into the community minus permanent visas, or are still in detention, now have another reason to resist deportation.

Ardern manipulated the previous Govt’s standing offer of 150 places for asylum seekers in detention in Aust to promote herself as the Anti-Dutton, a human rights warrior vs a rightwing redneck Aust Minister. At least one of her Ministers told untruths in your media about boats departing from Indonesia for NZ. If you remember, the Aust Govt claimed, correctly, that Ardern’s very public stance would only encourage smugglers. Another example of Ardern’s self promotion. I fail to see how her aggressive stance benefited NZ’s national interest.

The above are the reasons Aust Federal Police are being sent to Colombo to help investigate. NZ should sent police too.

A symptom of the US v China rivalry over Sri Lanka, and disruption. The attacks will have strategic consequences.

‘After hundreds were killed Easter Sunday in a series of bombings at public buildings, churches and hotels across Sri Lanka, the U.S. and Sri Lankan militaries have called off their planned Cooperation Afloat and Readiness Training exercise this week, according to the U.S. Navy. The USS Spruance and USNS Millinocket arrived Thursday at Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port, about 160 miles southeast of the country’s capital of Colombo, for what was planned as a weeklong exercise.’